Oh this is a lovely article, in the New York Times Business Section no less (and when's the last time there's been any good news there?)

Somehow it just makes me feel a little stronger, more hopeful, more on track, than anything I've read in a long time. And Alice Waters is again featured.

We used to live in Oakland Ca and went to Chez Panisse...way back...who would have thought we'd get to this day, where the right thing may actually see light of day? And reform of subsidizing industrial agribusiness to boot...

My sister's kid (21) asked me yesterday about a package of creamed spinach in the freezer (not mine, though). She likes spinach with vinegar on it, and she wanted to know if she could do that with creamed spinach. I told her to read the label of ingredients... apparently she has never done that before. So then she wanted to know what all those chemicals were, and I told her they are what she eats every day when she doesn't read labels. I hope a tad of it sank in!

Yes, it will be an uphill battle, but inch by inch I think we are moving up that hill...

I heard last night though that the food safety bill aims to track every molecule of food through the chain...requiring people buying at farmer's markets to fill out forms of what they buy and when they are planning to consume it, with all their contact info...you know, in case hundreds of people get sick the FDA can track it. Now that's ridiculous, since none of these food scares involve small growers, and by definition, small growers will not cause huge outbreaks.

It is one more attempt by the multinational agribusinesses to shut down local farmers.

I guess we'll all need machines to put SKUs on every tomato we give away or sell.

There are at least 2 bills in the senate, and 1 or more in the House. HR 875 is the least of our worries. Sorry, I forget the numbers of the Senate bills... 814? DON'T quote me on the number... my memory fails when I need it most.

So much is happening at lightning speed in our legislature. People are getting glassy eyed trying to figure out what's going on. It's a good time for scoundrels to slip in everything the lobbyists demand.

We probably won't even hear about all the new laws until we find out we've violated them!

Sandor Katz wrote about the many "bread clubs" and other community food clubs in his book "The Future Will Not Be Microwaved". The clubs started as a way for someone to sell small quantities of home baked bread to their friends and neighbors without having to go through all the capital improvements and hoops required for a bakery business. This expanded to others who made homemade jams, cakes, salsas etc. You could only get access to the club if you were referred by another member. Eventually the club grew to a few hundred members who meet regularly for a local food "exchange". More and more of these are popping up.

GM Great idea! If all goes well I'll have way too many potatoes, and wouldn't it be great to swap some for something else? Or even "chits" . COmmunities are starting to use their own local currencies again, as they did in the Great Depression.

D, I read a lot about local currencies a few years back when I lived in Asheville. There actually was a thriving barter economy group in the next county who used chits. They even had a dentist and a Vet who accepted the chits.

I read about the "bread clubs" in that book by Katz too. In many ways, we have (or had) that here via a woman who had a limited amount of raw milk. Meeting and exchanging for the milk was very clandestine. Alas, when her cow dried up, she moved on to other things...